The statements in this section merely provide background information related to the present disclosure and may not constitute prior art.
Medical devices of various shapes and sizes are commonly placed within patients to repair or assist in repairing damaged portions of the body. Often, these medical devices need to be removed from the patient at some point. For example, the patient may no longer need the medical device or the device is damaged and must be replaced. If these medical devices are not removed, they may cause harm to the patient, such as by causing infections or blockage in various body lumens.
However, removing these medical devices from a patient by performing open surgery is not ideal. The cost and time, both to perform the surgery and for the patient to recover, are prohibitive. Additionally, these patients are often in weakened states and are thus more susceptible to additional complications from performing an unnecessary open surgery.
Thus, minimally invasive techniques are preferable to performing open surgery. Frequently, a surgical snare is used to remove a medical device from a patient's body. Surgical snares are long, flexible devices that are inserted into a patient's body lumen. Generally, the distal end of the surgical snare uses some type of capture mechanism to secure the medical device to the surgical snare. Once the medical device is secured to the surgical snare, the surgical snare may be retracted from the patient's body, pulling the medical device with it.
Surgical snares as currently designed have several disadvantages. Often, the snares require the constant use of both of the surgeon's hands to properly manipulate the snare and remove the medical device from the body. Using both hands can be cumbersome and can lead to accidental disengagement of the surgical snare from the medical device during the removal process since both hands may be needed to maintain the snare in a closed configuration about the medical device. Additionally, most surgical snares have large, clunky handles that the surgeon uses to manipulate the capture mechanism of the snare. In addition to being cumbersome, these handles also inhibit the introduction of a larger retrieval catheter over the surgical snare. Larger retrieval catheters are often required when attempting to extract large medical devices from a patient's body.